Stop Mass Shootings

December 14, 2017

Today is the fifth anniversary of the murder of twenty first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The only thing that has changed since then is that people are getting more used to it.

We are sick and tired of innocent people dying in mass shootings. But more than that, we are tired of people despairing over doing anything about it. We as a country haven’t done anything because most of us haven’t cared enough, or cared effectively enough.

Successful politicians are obsessively concerned with getting reelected. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will do whatever the majority wants. When trying to decide how to vote on an issue, a politician will worry a lot about the opinions of constituents who feel really strongly about it, because they’re the ones who might decide to vote against him as a result. That, in a nutshell, is why the pro-gun forces keep winning: because politicians keep calculating that opposing them carries more political risk than opposing the silent majority.

For members of the silent majority, the task is to break the silence. Elected politicians need to be reminded constantly, by phone and in person, that most voters care about reducing the carnage from mass killings. It’s only by making our voices heard, loudly, that we can hope to change things.

Our immediate goal is to outlaw what are commonly calleds "assault weapons," the AR15 and equivalents, the weapon of choice for mass killers. These weapons serve no legitimate defensive purpose. Not all recent mass killings have involved these weapons, but the deadliest ones have. It is true that these weapons account for a small fraction of total gun deaths, but we are not trying to deal with the total problem of gun deaths. Our goal is more modest: to stop mass killings.

We also support other measures that advance that goal. It is absurd that 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks, yet Congress is so afraid of the NRA that it can’t pass legislation. It’s time for them to be afraid of the voters.

This page is intended to serve as an information source and a meeting point for people who care about reducing the number and size of mass killings. Please comment if you want to participate, and share us with friends. Also, please Share and Follow our Facebook page.

Three Favorite Gun-Hugger Memes, With Comments

Ah, memes, the great Internet substitute for convincing arguments. Here are three favorites of the gun-hugger crowd, with some comments:

1.

For some reason. gun-lovers think this is a crushing argument: "Well, criminals don't obey the law!"  By that logic, we could save a lot of trouble by getting rid of laws against against murder, child molestation, bank robbery and everything else-- because the people who do those things are criminals, and they don't obey the law.

In reality, making things illegal makes them harder to do. Making assault weapons illegal means that there will be fewer of them.

To be fair, the gun-lovers'  argument would at least be plausible if someone were proposing to ban all guns. Then you can imagine people fearing that they would be disarmed and helpless before the armed criminals. But nobody's proposing that. Being deprived of an AR15 is not the same as being disarmed.

2.

The point of this meme may not be immediately obvious. The gun in front looks like an M1 Garand, which was the main infantry rifle in World War II and the Korean War. It was the first semiautomatic rifle, firing a shot with each pull of the trigger, in general military use.

So obviously you're being told that you're not a real man if you didn't know that. But the more important point is that while ignorant liberals are frightened of the scary black thing in back, the gun in front has most of the same capabilities and has killed far more people.

Well, great. The thing is, though, that mass shooters nowadays don't use the M1. They use things more like that scary black thing in back. People aren't frightened of those guns because of ignorance or irrationality. People are frightened of those guns because they've been used in so many horrific slaughters.

Hadn't you noticed?

3.

Ah, the hammer meme. If there's one thing that gun-lovers love more than their guns themselves, it's this "fact." Unfortunately, it's not true.

To begin with, no, the FBI does not report data on hammer homicides. The figure cited above comes from this document, and as you can see, in 2011 there were 496 murders with "blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)," a category that presumably includes not only hammers but baseball bats, tire irons, rocks, and so on. And it's not clear why they say that rifles were used "fewer than 323" homicides, when that total does not include another 1,684 homicides classed as "other guns or type not stated."

In any case, all this misses the point. The reason to ban the so-called assault weapons is to reduce the number of mass shootings. Mass shootings are a small fraction of total homicides, just as terrorism is. (And, of course, there's substantial overlap.) But both are important out of proportion to their numbers, because they are assaults on the normal life of our society. Next time someone cites the hammer statistic, ask him: How many times have hammers been used in mass killings?

Also, of course, hammers have other uses besides killing people. Assault weapons don't.